For some reason recently I’ve seen a lot of “actually decimate doesn’t mean to destroy something, only to reduce it by one tenth🤓” and I would counter by saying that actually a word means what it’s commonly understood to mean

A word’s etymology is not its definition, and no non-pedant has used ‘decimate’ in that context in probably a century or more

Even then, they act as though 1 out of 10 is mundane. It was visceral enough to have made it into English usage in its current state. It enjoyed some time as mostly a Church term for taxes, but by the 17th century took on its form today. Why? Because the origin of the word is brutal.

It’d be the equivalent of a US battalion failing so bad that they’re decimated, losing 10%. That’s anywhere from 30-100 soldiers just executed arbitrarily. So yeah, the etymology nerds should maybe sit down and think it through.